NYCFC 2017 Weekly Update By The Numbers – MLS Week 14 June 6

First weekly update post of the year went up 4 weeks ago after 9 games, and just before (what NYC fans hope) will be the toughest stretch of schedule this season. At that point NYC had 16 points in 9 games. Based on PPG it was he high point of the season at 1.78. What followed was a stretch of 6 games in 21 days, with the first 4 on the road. The team managed 4 points in the 4 Away games followed by another 4 points in the 2 Home games, going 2-2-2 for 8 points out of 18 (1.33 PPG). Ignoring the lack of rest and missing squad pieces, both of those qualify as barely acceptable borderline results. But allowing for the squad difficulties, most notably the absence of Yangel Herrera for all 6 of these games, and the results become more acceptable. Other notable absences include Matarrita, who only came on as a late sub in the last game and Pirlo, who played 90 minutes total out of 540 due to a mysterious knee injury. There were other, briefer absences during the stretch, including Alexander Ring missing a game due to yellow card accumulation.

Due to these absences, NYC had to go deep into its roster. Here is a list of the non-goalkeepers making $75k base salary or less and their minutes during this stretch compared to the full 15 games:

What stands out to me is that Lopez, Okoli, Stertzer and Sweat together played 757 of their combined 1139 minutes in 2017 during these 6 games. That’s 66% of their minutes in 40% of the games. To be fair Lopez was hurt previously but the other 3 each individually had 50% or more of their minutes in just those 6 games. That’s a lot of sub minutes from the very bottom of the team’s roster. I excluded White because he’s mostly a starter anyway, and could be considered more of a bargain player rather than just cap filler, and he played 41% of his minutes in the 6 games, which is pretty much proportional.

NYC dropped 6 projected points over this tough stretch.They were sitting at 60.52 after 9 games.

Sample records and possible results:

Finally, the comparative graphs. I think the note here is that after 15 games last year the team had 6 fewer points, and it was the low point of the season. But, they also won the next 4 so the 2017 squad needs to get 7 or more in the next 4 to stay ahead of last year’s pace. At some point soon — probably in 2018 in fact — it will become unreasonable to expect the team to improve every year.But it still seems a fair expectation this season

Related

Comments

A couple things of note.
* The further into the season you go the harder it is to affect PPG. We are looking dangerously close to 2016 on that stat at a point in the season where we could easily find that difficult to change.
* OTOH 2015 saw 1 and 2016 saw 2 periods where our rolling 5-game PPG went over 2. We have yet to top that mark in 2017. So maybe we have a stellar stretch or two in our future to push us upward.
* Our GD improvement this year is awesome. It really does seem like it should be translating into more points for us.

Hi footy. Yes, the GD is off the charts compared to last year. It hasn’t led to a proportional rise in results because it was concentrated in 3 games: DC Orlando and Philly. Outside of those 3 games the GD is basically break even.
Thanks for visiting and the comments.